For angiogenic diseases such as various types of cancers, multiple myeloma, articular rheumatism, psoriasis, intraocular angiogenic diseases such as wet-type age-related macular degeneration, atherosclerotic plaque, vascular malformation, vascular agglutination, ovarian hypertrophy syndrome, polycystic ovary, granuloma, angioma, a hypertrophic scar, keloid, scleroderma, verruca, treatments are carried out using protamine, a combination of a steroid and heparin, a combination of a steroid and hexuronyl hexosaminoglycan sulfate, mitoxantrone, endostatin, a heparin-binding fragment of fibronectin, a prostaglandin synthetase inhibitor, γ interferon, a gold compound, lymphotoxin, D-penicillamine, a combination of a steroid and β-cyclodextrin tetradecasulfate, a protease inhibitor, methotrexate, interferon α-2a, an anti-VEGF drug, and the like.
Typical types of angiogenic diseases include intraocular angiogenic diseases such as wet-type age-related macular degeneration. A common method of treatment for intraocular angiogenic diseases uses an anti-VEGF drug as an intraocular injection. However, the method of treatment using an anti-VEGF drug takes a lot of money, needs repeated injections regularly, provides a great deal of psychological fear to patients of insertion of injection needles into their eye. Furthermore, there is a great risk of serious complications such as intraocular infections with great difficulty in treatment, endophthalmitis caused by stimulation of injection, and the like, and induction of retinal detachment. Further, there is a report that eyesight is improved for a certain period of time by a treatment using anti-VEGF drug in most cases, whereas the eyesight is worsened again in the long term even with continued treatment. That is, although an anti-VEGF drug used in the present treatment costs a lot, it has a danger, and thus sufficient treatment satisfaction is not necessarily achieved in view of its effects. Other treatments include surgical methods such as photodynamic therapy, laser photocoagulation, and neovascular extraction, however these methods have problems also in terms of costs and treatment satisfaction, have high invasiveness, and sometimes require hospitalization. Consequently, no conventional method of treatment for intraocular angiogenic diseases has been satisfactory yet, and thus it is considered that many problems to be overcome in the present treatments.
Recently, it was reported that a WT1 protein, which is a cancer antigenic protein, is also developed in blood vessels of cancer tissues (Non-Patent Literature 1: N. Wagner et al. Oncogene (2008) 27, 3662-3672).
There have already been many reports on experiments using a cancer antigen peptide as a cancer vaccine, however, there was no report on treatment and prevention of angiogenic diseases using a cancer antigen peptide as a vaccine.
Under the above circumstances, a novel complete curative therapy for angiogenic disease is desired.